Booker Taliaferro Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington. April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915. , Education is not a thing apart from life-not a "system”, nor a philosophy; it is direct teaching how to live and how to work.

There are two ways of exerting one's strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. , -Booker T. Washington Quotes

Although the exact date and location is undetermined, it is believed Booker Taliaferro Washington, was born in 1856 on Burroughs' farm in Franklin County, Virginia. In his autobiography, Up From Slavery, he wrote "I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.” His mother was a plantation cook and his father was believed to be a white man from a nearby farm.

Washington's first experience with school was not as a student, but to carry the books for one of Master James Burroughs' daughters. In April 1865, a United States officer read the Emancipation Proclamation to the slaves on the plantation indicating their freedom. Washington's family soon left the plantation to join his stepfather, Washington Ferguson, in Maiden, West Virginia. Washington took a job in a salt mine and attended school at night. When asked for his full name he calmly replied, "Booker Washington.” At age 16, he walked most of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students. Washington knew working to pay his way would allow even a poor student admission to Hampton Institute. The head teacher was suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes and only admitted him after he cleaned a room to her satisfaction.

Washington's life had come full circle by earning his living by menial task, however his entrance into Hampton Institute led him away from a life of forced labor for good. Washington became an instructor and ultimately a principal and guiding force behind the establishment of Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1881. Washington was recognized as the nation's foremost black educator.

Washington invoked his own past to illustrate his belief in the dignity of work "…There was no period of my life that was devoted to play," he wrote. This concept of self-reliance was born of hard work and became the cornerstone of Washington's social philosophy.

As one of the most influential black men of his time, Washington was not without his critics. Many felt Washington's conservative approach undermined the quest for racial equality. In Washington's 1895 address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, he stated, "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

By the last years of his life, Washington had moved away from many of his accommodationist policies. Speaking out with his new frankness, Washington attacked racism. A man who overcame near-impossible odds, Washington died at the age of 59. He is best remembered for his service to the empowerment of Black Americans rising above economic slavery that held them down long after becoming legally free citizens.